Skylum Luminar 4.2 review

Verdict: 4.5 stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Luminar 4 is an unusual and constantly evolving program. Increasingly, it’s specialising in altered, enhanced and augmented reality effects – and these are exceptionally effective. You will find them either amazing or ‘cheating’, depending on which side of the fence you stand. Apart from that Luminar also has a full selection of basic photo editing tools like curves, cropping, layers and retouching. It’s very powerful and effective photo editor at the price, even without all the AI fireworks.

What is it?

Luminar is an all-in-one photo editing and effects program that comes with its own built in Library tool for browsing, searching and organising your photos. All its tools are ‘non-destructive’, so you can go back at any time to undo the changes you’ve made to your pictures or try a different look completely. Imagine Lightroom with massively expanded editing and effects tools, but much less sophisticated cataloging. Luminar does not have Adobe’s cloud sync and mobile app support.

Luminar’s speciality is AI (artificial intelligence) tools which can analyse the image to identify objects and subject types to mask and edit them selectively. The AI Sky Enhancer is an early example, but the technology has moved on a long way since then, with the AI Portrait Enhancer panel in the latest version, AI Sky Replacement and AI Augmented Sky tools.

You can carry out all the usual routine photo editing adjustments too, but Luminar’s real drive is towards enhanced, augmented and reimagined reality. If that’s your bag, it’s spectacular. If you like your photography ‘real’, there are all the tools you need to enhance your images in more traditional ways too, but there may be more traditional programs that suit you better. Given Luminar’s price, though, it’s going to be hard to find one that delivers as much for the money.

Luminar 4 has an integrated Library for browsing and organizing your photos. It’s basic but effective, but while it does have filters for flags, color labels and ratings, it doesn’t have search tools or luxuries like virtual copies.

How does it work?

You can use Luminar 4 as a standalone program or as a plug-in for Photoshop and Lightroom. If you use it as standalone software you get an integrated Library screen for browsing your photos and an Edit screen for adjusting and enhancing your pictures.

If you use it as a plug-in, you just get the editing tools. When you’ve finished editing your photo it’s returned to the ‘host’ software. With Luminar 3, Skylum briefly offered this plug-in version as a separate product (‘Luminar Flex’), but it’s now been rolled back into the main program so that Luminar 4 comes with the plug-in included.

The main Library window is basic but effective. You import the folders you want to include and they appear in the sidebar to the right. You can also create Albums and use Shortcuts, such as Recently Edited and Favourites, to find your pictures. You can add Ratings, Flags and Color Labels and filter your images with these properties, but that’s the extent of Luminar’s search tools.

The filters and tools in the Edit window are split into four workspaces. This is a major departure from earlier versions of Luminar, where the workspaces were endlessly customisable. The filters have been consolidated too, and they are now found in specific workspaces.

The four workspaces are Essentials, Creative, Portrait and Pro. It’s not always obvious where you might expect to find the filter you need, but it won’t take you long to remember..

On top of all these effects, Luminar has a whole catalog of ‘Looks’, accessed via a button on the top toolbar. These apply preset combinations of filters and settings you can apply with a single click. You can create and save your own and download more from the Luminar website.

You don’t have to use the fancy AI filters. Luminar also has a full set of regular editing tools, complete with layers and masks. The tools are arranged in four workspaces, and each tool/filter can be masked individually. You can also apply preset Looks.

Quality of results

If you’re looking for a traditional photo editor with all the usual tools that behave in all the usual ways, you’ll find them all here, though sometimes you need to know where too look. For example, the Levels and Curves settings only appear if you click the ‘Advanced Settings’ button in the Light panel. Nevertheless, even without all of its AI-driven special effects, Luminar is an extremely capable all-round photo editor with lens and perspective corrections, layers and masks and a remarkably powerful set of tools for the money.

However, its regular tools are woven in and around its AI effects and filters. These are separated out to a degree in the Creative and Portrait workspaces, but the Basic and Pro workspaces mingle traditional tools and custom effects too.

Luminar’s regular editing tools are very good. They’re not the same as Lightroom’s, or Photoshop’s or Capture One’s, but it’s not aimed at that kind of user.

Its AI effects are quite stunning. Or controversial – depending on where you stand on image manipulation and enhancement. The AI Sky Replacement tool is exceptionally good at identifying and masking skies and then seamlessly blending in a new one. The AI Augmented Sky tool can add planets, moons, clouds, birds or fireworks to your sky, mostly so well that you’ll curse all those years you spent struggling in Photoshop.

The AI Portrait Enhancer is equally impressive – this time for its remarkable subtlety and restraint. Instead of turning human faces into elf-faced porcelain dolls, it offers progressive and controllable enhancements that retain your subject’s unique character, which often includes their quirks and flaws. The Portrait workspace is a bit of triumph, to be honest.

The AI Sky Replacement tool is uncannily good. It replaced the bland blue sky in the original (inset, left) and masked it perfectly with no manual intervention at all. The Relight Scene slider shifted the color balance of the scene towards the tones of the replacement sky.

There is one glaring omission in Luminar 4 – you can’t create virtual copies in the Library. It’s been promised for a long time but it has never appeared – and yet a program like this which can create so many dramatically different variations on a single image is crying out for virtual copies.

Who is it for?

Luminar is a good value alternative for traditional photo editors who want a competent set of tools at a good price.

Really, though, it’s aimed at experimenters and image-makers, photographers who are excited by the medium and its potential but still relatively new to the genre. Its aim is to offer spectacular imagery without the time or technical know-how that’s been needed in the past, and it certainly succeeds at that.

Skylum Luminar 4.2

Rod Lawton

Features

Value

Results

Summary

Luminar 4 is an unusual and constantly evolving program. Increasingly, it’s specialising in altered, enhanced and augmented reality effects – and these are exceptionally effective.

Save $10/£10 at the checkout with the coupon code ‘LAWTON’

Reader Interactions

Comments

My two cents since i am using Luninar for some months now. 1) Except for the mentioned creativity options, the AI knowledge is also used in the first tab in order to do the initial work on any raw image. One is called “AI Enhancement”, which gives -if not pushed above 40 or so- a great base to work on. Same for ‘AI structure’, which is like smart clarity, meaning that it only applies where it looks good. For example it skips skins. I read somewhere that the software taught the AI with millions of pictures to know what its ‘looking’ at. 2) i dont really like the library mode. Annoyingly it does not always seem to refresh. Often, when i have the software running, and copy files into the opened map, it wont show the new files. Minor but still … and i cant filter on pictures with a star for example.

For once I would like to see a Luminar review that is not sponsored and payed for by Skylum. Every review you find on the net ends with “if you want to buy Luminar… ” affiliate links. Needless to say, all the reviews sound the same. This one included. Sad.

What’s sad, my friend, is that the Internet audience has become so suspicious. Perhaps you are confusing affiliate links with sponsorship. Affiliate links are the modern day equivalent of display ads on websites. If you like the product you can buy it or (as I so often recommend) download a trial version first to make sure you like it. Sponsored posts are different. They are paid for and approved by companies like Skylum but there are very strict rules about how sponsored posts should be flagged up and explained. I don’t do sponsored posts. As to the question of all reviews sounding the same, that may be because they are talking about the same product. I am disappointed you think my review sounds the same as everyone else’s, because I can assure you it isn’t. Perhaps you haven’t read it? I can understand the suspicion that reviewers write good reviews in order to get more revenue, and I dare say it does happen, but it’s not something I do so please leave me out of this.

I think my suspicion is pretty much grounded. All the Luminar reviews, yours included, give it a very high rating. That doesn’t reflect reality though. Have you taken a look at the Skylum community forum? The negative feedback in there has gotten so bad that they started to censor posts and close them down so that no one can comment anymore. Luminar is full of showstopping bugs, has massive performance issues and the company keeps switching focus like other people change their underwear. Remember when they promised a full fledged DAM that would rival Lightroom’s cataloging experience? They even called it a Lightroom killer. Now look at the Luminar library function, years later. It’s a joke. Not a single review of Luminar ever mentions these issues. Weird.

“The negative feedback in there has gotten so bad that they started to censor posts and close them down so that no one can comment anymore.” That’s what made me stop and think. I did some checking and I realised that you are using the comments in my review to continue an argument you started on the Luminar forum. It doesn’t actually matter what I say, does it? I can’t believe I’ve wasted my time on this.

Contact

Best image-editing software

Photoshop vs Lightroom, which is best? It’s not that simple, as anyone who uses them will know, because although there is some crossover (well, a lot of crossover), they have very different roles and very different strengths and weaknesses. One is not better than the other because it depends on what you want to do. […]